The article discusses three place names in Jämtland, Sweden: Åbbåsen, Gåxåsen and Fjösåsen. The main focus is on the possibility of personal names used in these compound place names, together with the locally very common second element åsen (ʻridgeʼ). Previous interpretations have suggested that personal names Ubbe, Gök and Fjäder constitute first elements in the aforementioned place names, and the author agrees in two out of three cases. When studying Åbbåsen, no clear evidence has been found to support one hypothesis more than the other. 

This article deals with Finnish-language surnames (family names) in Sweden. These may be borne by Finnish immigrants or their descendants, or by members or descendants of the Tornedalian minority group in the north of Sweden. In this study, the 20 commonest Finnish-language surnames in Sweden as a whole, the 20 commonest Finnish-language surnames in Norrbotten county in the northernmost of Sweden, and the 20 commonest surnames in Finland are compared. This shows that the top-20 surnames of Norrbotten county and of Finland differ to quite a large extent. While the commonest surnames in Finland often ends in the suffix –nen, a suffix that was widespread in Finland during the times of nation-building in the last decades of the 1900th century, the commonest Finnish-language surnames in Norrbotten county are usually simplex names. A study of the 1880, 1890, 1900 and 1910 Swedish censuses shows that the Finnish-language surnames common in Norrbotten county is also those of long history in Sweden. It is concluded that the Finnish-language surnames in Sweden consists of two layers, the Tornedalian minority surnames and the Finnish immigrant surnames, even though some surnames belong to both those groups.

Föredrag vid ett symposium i Uppsala den 20 november 2015.

Åtta forskare från olika områden tecknar här för första gången en bild av tamgetens betydelse och tillvaro i Sverige från stenålder till våra dagar ur ekonomiska, kulturhistoriska, språkliga och veterinärmedicinska perspektiv.

Abstract: Julbonden and Elvis. Names of bulls and oxen yesterday and today.

This paper gives an overview of individual names given to bulls and oxen in Sweden during the last 300 years. A large amount of names are preserved in estate inventories from the 1730’s and a century onwards, and the main part of the paper is devoted to this period. Most names in the older agrarian society were based on specific traits in the named animal; exterior characteristics, time of birth or place of origin. Several names were secondary loans from the mental lexicon, e.g. male titles. Very few personal names were bestowed to the animals, with the exception of names identical to soldiers’ names and dithematic surnames. The paper continues with an overview of the changes of names and name-giving practices during the late 19th century, a period when organized breeding begins to be documented in herd-books. More common personal names are used and names from other languages for imported animals make an entrance. The older name-stock of dithematic names related to the characteristics of a specific animal become irrelevant as the wish to show a bull’s heritage grows stronger and the bull gets named after his parents. This development continued during the 20th century, today the older names are almost non-existent. 

Focus is on the names of companies in the Human Resources sector. Our study object are names of private job coaching firms in Sweden during the last ten years. A sample of these names is examined. Their usage of different languages, linguistic and onomastic features in the names, and the semantic meaning they convey are investigated. As these firms are recent additions to the Swedish commercial advertising landscape, some of the marketing strategies displayed on the companies' websites are discussed.

Behandlar hur namnlängderna i den svenska almanackan har förändrats under 1900-talet.

Kor, tjurar och oxar ger oss mat, kläder, gödning och de präglar vårt landskap på många sätt. Nio forskare, i ämnen från veterinärmedicin över agrarhistoria och etnologi till arkeologi och språkvetenskap, visar här nötkreaturens betydelse och villkor från stenålder till våra dagar.

Författarna skriver om nötkreaturens historia, om kor och arkeologi, om sjukdomar och djurvälfärd, om kornas viktiga roll i bondesamhället, om kommandorop till oxar och om vad som hänt med djurhållning och avel under de senaste årtiondena. Djurens stora betydelse visas också i kapitel om de många folkliga föreställningarna kring dem och om tjurars och oxars individuella namn.

Boken bygger på föredrag vid det nötkreaturssymposium som hölls i Uppsala Arkivcentrum november 2018 och är redigerad av Katharina Leibring och Ingvar Svanberg.

Reinfeldt and Röda Faran, Lättfot and Linneas Blomsterbod 

On the naming of crafts, businesses and more besides

This essay discusses names in the part of the onomasticon that is usually referred to as ‘Other names’, that is, names that are neither place-names nor personal names. Six groups are examined, including two in which naming is (at least partly) officially regulated, namely business names and ship names. A third group, names of aircrafts, is voluntary, but the names are on display on the machines.The other three groups consist of objects that are given individual names spontaneously, without official involvement: the names of individual vehicles, appliances in the home, and toys. To sum up the place of these groups (and others with names given spontaneously) in the onomasticon, they can be referred to as ‘Miscellaneous other names’.

It is shown that several of these groups often borrow names from other name categories, but also that, for both businesses and ships, various stocks of names have developed that are reused and used to create new ones. I also attempt to identify the factors promoting the naming of things that are neither people nor places. These factors include where there is a pronounced need to identify the ‘object’, where it is alive, or where it can be perceived to be alive because it is mobile. Earlier patterns can also give rise to naming, as too, of course, can a commercial or legal need for something to be named.

Der Ausgangspunkt des Beitrages ist die ambivalente Relation zwischen einer relativ strikten Namengesetzgebung und den offiziellen Aufforderungen zur Namensänderung, die seit der ersten Namenverordnung im Jahre 1901 in Schweden vorliegen. Es werden im Beitrag einige problematische Bereiche des neuen Personennamengesetzes vom 01-07-2017 aufgegriffen, unter anderem wie gut das Gesetz an die multilinguale Gesellschaft des heutigen Schweden angepasst ist und wie die beiden Möglichkeiten, Doppelnamen als Familienname zu benutzen und be einer Namensänderung von den gewöhnlichsten Familiennamen frei wählen zu dürfen, auf den künftigen Familiennamenbestand einwirken wird.

I uppsatsen skildras hur namnet Moa blir etablerat i Sverige tack vare författaren Moa Martinsons popularitet och hur det därefter blivit ett av de vanligaste förnamnen i landet.

Change, competition and confusion among settlement names in Bråbo härad

Written records of place-names are important not only because they help to establish the etymology of the names, but also because they make it possible to investigate how different names evolve and change during their lifetime. Often, names develop fairly regularly and according to well-known patterns, but sometimes other kinds of changes occur that cannot be explained by sound laws or other linguistic factors.

In this paper, I discuss the irregular changes that can be observed among the settlement names of Bråbo härad in Östergötland. The corpus studied comprises some 120 names, and for about one-fifth of these, changes are recorded that deviate from the expected development. In some of these cases the irregularity consists of a morphological variation, but more often the changes are the result of replacement of the entire name or part of it. Some of these processes of name replacement were rapid, but in other cases the written records show that competing names and name forms existed during the process, leaving us with a more or less confused picture of what actually happened.

Although the changes discussed in the paper are irregular, some patterns can be discerned. In the majority of cases, replacement of names took place during the 17th and 18th centuries. Geographically, most of the changes are to be found in the flat agricultural district in the southern part of Bråbo härad, and in adjacent woodland areas. The changes are mostly associated with settlements belonging to the upper classes, and often occurred when ordinary farms were turned into manors, when there was a change of ownership, or in connection with different kinds of reorganisation of the settlement. It is also shown that both the topographical and the onomastic landscape influence how place-names evolve, not least as far as the occurrence of alternative, competing names is concerned.

Smeknamn på platser handlar ofta mer om känslor än om praktiska behov. Genom namnen avslöjar vi vår relation till platsen.

The dynamics of settlement names was the theme of NORNA’s 47th symposium, held in Lund in May 2017. This volume presents seven of the papers read at the symposium. Two of these were part of a workshop on Scandinavian place-names in -lev/-löv. The rest of the papers covers a broad range of perspectives on settlement names and settlement history, from past to present.